Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige Confirms the Big Death in ‘Avengers 2’ is Permanent

Since Avengers: Age of Ultron is already well on its way to making $1 billion worldwide, chances are strong that you’ve already seen Marvel’s latest adventure and won’t need a spoiler warning about the apparent death of a main character. Still, just in case, here’s a spoiler warning, because Marvel President Kevin Feige has officially confirmed that the character in question is no longer among the living and won’t be coming back to life.

A Reddit user (via IGN) recently attended a Q&A with Feige at the University of Southern California, where the maestro of the Marvel Cinematic Universe made it clear that Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s Pietro Maximoff, aka Quicksilver, died in the final battle against Ultron. And no, he won’t follow the grand comic book tradition of coming back to life in a few years:

Quicksilver is DEAD. 100%, he's not coming back any time soon, there are no plans. No LMD [life model decoy], no escaping bullets, no retcon. (Feige) said he is dead and wanted to make sure people understood that.

But of course he would say that! That’s how you throw people off the scent before you resurrect him just in time for Avengers: Infinity War!

In all seriousness, Feige is the second person connected to the production to confirm that the speedster’s heroic death is also a permanent one. Director Joss Whedon says that he did shoot an alternate ending where Pietro miraculously survives getting shot a couple dozen times, but this tragedy-tinged conclusion was his preferred version (because death and despair is the Way of the Whedon). However, Feige also made it clear that Quicksilver’s death has been part of the grand plan for quite some time now and that many of Ultron’s biggest twists were already known when they shot The Avengers three years ago:

During filming of original Avengers they were already planning AoU - they knew Quiksilver [sic] would die, Vision and Scarlet Witch would have a 'moment,' and that the gem was in the scepter.

Another key takeaway from that statement is the “moment” between Vision and Scarlet Witch, where the Android Avenger rescues Wanda Maximoff from the floating city before Tony Stark detonates it (what a crazy movie). As any comic fan will tell you, those two are a longtime couple in the pages of the Marvel universe, so that intimate rescue wasn’t just an Easter egg, but possible groundwork for a future onscreen relationship.